Sophist
feeling of poetry. He is the true countryman of his contemporaries
Goethe and Schiller. Many fine expressions are scattered up and down
in his writings, as when he tells us that 'the Crusaders went to the
Sepulchre but found it empty.' He delights to find vestiges of his own
philosophy in the older German mystics. And though he can be scarcely
said to have mixed much in the affairs of men, for, as his biographer
tells us, 'he lived for thirty years in a single room,' yet he is far
from being ignorant of the world. No one can read his writings without
acquiring an insight into life. He loves to touch with the spear of
logic the follies and self-deceptions of mankind, and make them appear
in their natural form, stripped of the disguises of language and custom.
He will not allow men to defend themselves by an appeal to one-sided or
abstract principles. In this age of reason any one can too easily find
a reason for doing what he likes (Wallace). He is suspicious of a
distinction which is often made between a person's character and his
conduct. His spirit is the opposite of that of Jesuitism or casuistry
(Wallace). He affords an example of a remark which has been often made,
that in order to know the world it is not necessary to have had a great
experience of it.
2. Hegel, if not the greatest philosopher, is certainly the greatest
critic of philosophy who ever lived. No one else has equally mastered
the opinions of his predecessors or traced the connexion of them in
the same manner. No one has equally raised the human mind above the
trivialities of the common logic and the unmeaningness of 'mere'
abstractions, and above imaginary possibilities, which, as he truly
says, have no place in philosophy. No one has won so much for the
kingdom of ideas. Whatever may be thought of his own system it will
hardly be denied that he has overthrown Locke, Kant, Hume, and the
so-called philosophy of common sense. He shows us that only by the study
of metaphysics can we get rid of metaphysics, and that those who are
in theory most opposed to them are in fact most entirely and hopelessly
enslaved by them: 'Die reinen Physiker sind nur die Thiere.'
The disciple of Hegel will hardly become the slave of any other
system-maker. What Bacon seems to promise him he will find realized
in the great German thinker, an emancipation nearly complete from the
influences of the scholastic logic.
3. Many of those who are least disposed to become the votaries of
Hegelianism nevertheless recognize in his system a new logic supplying
a variety of instruments and methods hitherto unemployed. We may not
be able to agree with him in assimilating the natural order of human
thought with the history of philosophy, and still less in identifying
both with the divine idea or nature. But we may acknowledge that the
great thinker has thrown a light on many parts of human knowledge,
and has solved many difficulties. We cannot receive his doctrine of
opposites as the last word of philosophy, but still we may regard it as
a very important contribution to logic. We cannot affirm that words have
no meaning when taken out of their connexion in the history of thought.
But we recognize that their meaning is to a great extent due to
association, and to their correlation with one another. We see the
advantage of viewing in the concrete what mankind regard only in the
abstract. There is much to be said for his faith or conviction, that God
is immanent in the world,--within the sphere of the human mind, and not
beyond it. It was natural that he himself, like a prophet of old, should
regard the philosophy which he had invented as the voice of God in man.
But this by no means implies that he conceived himself as creating God
in thought. He was the servant of his own ideas and not the master of
them. The philosophy of history and the history of philosophy may be
almost said to have been discovered by him. He has done more to explain
Greek thought than all other writers put together. Many ideas of
development, evolution, reciprocity, which have become the symbols of
another school of thinkers may be traced to his speculations. In the
theology and philosophy of England as well as of Germany, and also in
the lighter literature of both countries, there are always appearing
'fragments of the great banquet' of Hegel.
SOPHIST
PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: Theodorus, Theaetetus, Socrates. An Eleatic
Stranger, whom Theodorus and Theaetetus bring with them. The younger
Socrates, who is a silent auditor.
THEODORUS: Here we are, Socrates, true to our agreement of yesterday;
and we bring with us a stranger from Elea, who is a disciple of
Parmenides and Zeno, and a true philosopher.
SOCRATES: Is he not rather a god, Theodorus, who comes to us in the
disguise of a stranger? For Homer says that all the gods, and especially
the god of strangers, are companions of the meek and just, and visit
the good and evil among men. And may not your companion be one of those
higher powers, a cross-examining deity, who has come to spy out our
weakness in argument, and to cross-examine us?
THEODORUS: Nay, Socrates, he is not one of the disputatious sort--he
is too good for that. And, in my opinion, he is not a god at all; but
divine he certainly is, for this is a title which I should give to all
philosophers.
SOCRATES: Capital, my friend! and I may add that they are almost as hard
to be discerned as the gods. For the true philosophers, and such as
are not merely made up for the occasion, appear in various forms
unrecognized by the ignorance of men, and they 'hover about cities,'
as Homer declares, looking from above upon human life; and some think
nothing of them, and others can never think enough; and sometimes they
appear as statesmen, and sometimes as sophists; and then, again, to many
they seem to be no better than madmen. I should like to ask our Eleatic
friend, if he would tell us, what is thought about them in Italy, and to
whom the terms are applied.
THEODORUS: What terms?
SOCRATES: Sophist, statesman, philosopher.
THEODORUS: What is your difficulty about them, and what made you ask?
SOCRATES: I want to know whether by his countrymen they are regarded as
one or two; or do they, as the names are three, distinguish also three
kinds, and assign one to each name?
THEODORUS: I dare say that the Stranger will not object to discuss the
question. What do you say, Stranger?
STRANGER: I am far from objecting, Theodorus, nor have I any difficulty
in replying that by us they are regarded as three. But to define
precisely the nature of each of them is by no means a slight or easy
task.
THEODORUS: You have happened to light, Socrates, almost on the very
question which we were asking our friend before we came hither, and he
excused himself to us, as he does now to you; although he admitted that
the matter had been fully discussed, and that he remembered the answer.
SOCRATES: Then do not, Stranger, deny us the first favour which we ask
of you: I am sure that you will not, and therefore I shall only beg of
you to say whether you like and are accustomed to make a long oration
on a subject which you want to explain to another, or to proceed by
the method of question and answer. I remember hearing a very noble
discussion in which Parmenides employed the latter of the two methods,
when I was a young man, and he was far advanced in years. (Compare
Parm.)
STRANGER: I prefer to talk with another when he responds pleasantly, and
is light in hand; if not, I would rather have my own say.
SOCRATES: Any one of the present company will respond kindly to you, and
you can choose whom you like of them; I should recommend you to take a
young person--Theaetetus, for example--unless you have a preference for
some one else.
STRANGER: I feel ashamed, Socrates, being a new-comer into your society,
instead of talking a little and hearing others talk, to be spinning out
a long soliloquy or address, as if I wanted to show off. For the true
answer will certainly be a very long one, a great deal longer than might
be expected from such a short and simple question. At the same time,
I fear that I may seem rude and ungracious if I refuse your courteous
request, especially after what you have said. For I certainly cannot
object to your proposal, that Theaetetus should respond, having already
conversed with him myself, and being recommended by you to take him.
THEAETETUS: But are you sure, Stranger, that this will be quite so
acceptable to the rest of the company as Socrates imagines?
STRANGER: You hear them applauding, Theaetetus; after that, there is
nothing more to be said. Well then, I am to argue with you, and if you
tire of the argument, you may complain of your friends and not of me.
THEAETETUS: I do not think that I shall tire, and if I do, I shall get
my friend here, young Socrates, the namesake of the elder Socrates, to
help; he is about my own age, and my partner at the gymnasium, and is
constantly accustomed to work with me.
STRANGER: Very good; you can decide about that for yourself as we
proceed. Meanwhile you and I will begin together and enquire into the
nature of the Sophist, first of the three: I should like you to make out
what he is and bring him to light in a discussion; for at present we are
only agreed about the name, but of the thing to which we both apply the
name possibly you have one notion and I another; whereas we ought
always to come to an understanding about the thing itself in terms of a
definition, and not merely about the name minus the definition. Now the
tribe of Sophists which we are investigating is not easily caught or
defined; and the world has long ago agreed, that if great subjects are
to be adequately treated, they must be studied in the lesser and easier
instances of them before we proceed to the greatest of all. And as I
know that the tribe of Sophists is troublesome and hard to be caught, I
should recommend that we practise beforehand the method which is to be
applied to him on some simple and smaller thing, unless you can suggest
a better way.
THEAETETUS: Indeed I cannot.
STRANGER: Then suppose that we work out some lesser example which will
be a pattern of the greater?
THEAETETUS: Good.
STRANGER: What is there which is well known and not great, and is yet as
susceptible of definition as any larger thing? Shall I say an angler?
He is familiar to all of us, and not a very interesting or important
person.
THEAETETUS: He is not.
STRANGER: Yet I suspect that he will furnish us with the sort of
definition and line of enquiry which we want.
THEAETETUS: Very good.
STRANGER: Let us begin by asking whether he is a man having art or not
having art, but some other power.
THEAETETUS: He is clearly a man of art.
STRANGER: And of arts there are two kinds?
THEAETETUS: What are they?
STRANGER: There is agriculture, and the tending of mortal creatures,
and the art of constructing or moulding vessels, and there is the art of
imitation--all these may be appropriately called by a single name.
THEAETETUS: What do you mean? And what is the name?
STRANGER: He who brings into existence something that did not exist
before is said to be a producer, and that which is brought into
existence is said to be produced.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: And all the arts which were just now mentioned are
characterized by this power of producing?
THEAETETUS: They are.
STRANGER: Then let us sum them up under the name of productive or
creative art.
THEAETETUS: Very good.
STRANGER: Next follows the whole class of learning and cognition;
then comes trade, fighting, hunting. And since none of these produces
anything, but is only engaged in conquering by word or deed, or in